In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

San Juan Community Theatre
100 2nd St. N.
Friday Harbor, Washington, 98250
United States

Tashi & Kaj Litch

Two fast-fingered brothers, Tashi Litch (14 yrs) and Kaj Litch (11 yrs), born in Britain and raised on a family farm on Orcas Island have been performing together for 5 years as Brother For Sale. Their music is rooted in their family traditions from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and the eclectic Pacific Northwest. As singers and instrumentalists (fiddle, mandolin, guitar and voice), Tashi and Kaj play a mix of original and traditional music on a variety of string instruments ranging from Bluegrass to Blues, Celtic to Choro, and Folk to Swing. They have been embraced during these formative years by an expanding number of endearing musician mentors, both local and touring, that have engaged community life, and these two boys, on Orcas Island. On the road, they have shared the stage with some of their favorite artists such as Brandi Carlile, Liz Carroll, Clay Ross, and their dog Tazz.

Adam Summers

Adam Summers was raised in New York City and the north woods of Canada. At Swarthmore College he earned degrees in mathematics and engineering, but was not interesting in pursuing either as a career. While teaching SCUBA in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef he met his first professional biologists. He returned home to get a masters degree in Biology at New York University and the University of Massachusetts for a Ph.D. Later at UC Berkeley he was a Miller Research Fellow and was approached by Pixar Studios to advise on animal movements and biology for the movie Finding Nemo. In 2001 he founded the Biomechanics Laboratory at the University of California and won the Bartholmew Prize for physiology research and the Academic Senate prize for undergraduate teaching. In 2009 he moved his laboratory north to the University of Washington's Friday Harbor Laboratories to be nearer the sea. He is a professor in the Biology Department and in the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences.

Alicia Malone

Alicia Malone is a film reporter, critic, TV host, writer, and all around movie geek, appearing on Access Hollywood, E!, MTV, AMC Theaters, Fandango, Afterbuzz TV, BiteSize TV, IGN, Reelz, EPIX, Australia’s Today Show, to name a few. Alicia travels the world to cover film festivals including Cannes, Toronto, Sundance, SXSW and Comic-Con, and has interviewed nearly every movie star you could name, even hugging all the hot male ones, and Oprah. Hey, she’s only human.

Amy Herdy

For more than twenty years, journalist and author Amy Herdy has specialized in trauma reporting, particularly sexual assault. Ms. Herdy’s professional engagements include teaching workshops on investigative reporting and trauma journalism for the U.S. State Department in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad, Pakistan. Her awards include an Emmy; Society of Professional Journalists awards; a Radio, Television News Directors Association award; an Associated Press award; two American Society of Newspaper Editors awards and a Military Reporters & Editors award. In 2011 Ms. Herdy published an award-winning memoir, Diary of a Predator, about her time at the Post covering the case of serial rapist Brent Brents. In 2015 she was the investigative producer for the documentary, “The Hunting Ground." She is now an investigative producer for Chain Camera Pictures and lives on San Juan Island in Washington state.

Anders Sorman-Nilsson

Anders Sorman-Nilsson is a futurist and innovation strategist who helps executives and business leaders decode trends, answer disruptive questions and strategize for foreseeable and unpredictable futures. As Founder of consultancy Thinque he has helped executives of Fortune 500s convert provocative questions into proactive, future strategies across four continents since 2005. His latest book Digilogue: how to win the digital minds and the analogue hearts of tomorrow’s customer - is hot off the press, and is featuring in business media including BRW, The Financial Review, Sky News Business, Qantas Magazine and ABC National Radio. When he is not hanging out with clients like Eli Lilly, Fuji Xerox, HP, Pernod Ricard, or People’s Choice Credit Union - globally and locally - he likes to get his hands dirty together with his mum, Birgitta, in the turn-around strategy for her 96-year-old bricks and mortar menswear store in Stockholm, Sweden in a world of Digital Disruption.

Dorothy Echodu

Dr. Dorothy Echodu is the CEO of Pilgrim Africa, a 501(c)3 engaged in malaria control, advocacy and education in Uganda. She works in very high transmission communities and engages in innovative and occasionally disruptive operational research into effective malaria control. Dorothy got her PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Washington and is currently a long-distance MPH candidate at Johns Hopkins. She’s married to Calvin, who’s Ugandan himself, has two especially brilliant and wonderful children, and travels to Africa several times a year.

Gretchen Krampf

Gretchen Krampf is a seasoned and sought-after leadership development and transformational coach. She has spent the last fifteen years guiding entrepreneurs, creatives and social change agents to thriving lives and prosperous outcomes, through increasing personal awareness and ability to be adaptive and resilient in the face of the constantly emerging issues that change provides. Since 2005, Gretchen has been building capacity in San Juan County community leaders, as Chair and Faculty of Leadership San Juan Islands. She is the Director of NewStories’ Thriving Salish Sea Project, convening diverse stakeholders across the bioregion to build alliances and address the challenges and opportunities of this exquisite bioregion.

Ian Boyden

Ian Boyden is a multimedia artist working across painting, sculpture, artist’s books, photography, and land art. His works demonstrate ecological awareness and intense interest in material relevance, and are completed through a series of collaborations with natural elements such as time, weather, river erosion, and the appetites of various animals. Widely collected and exhibited, his books and paintings are in public collections including Reed College, Stanford University, the Portland Art Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. With degrees in the History of Art from Wesleyan University and Yale University, Boyden is also a speaker, writer, and curator. For the past twenty years, Boyden has shared his time between the Northwest and China. Boyden is currently the Executive Director of the San Juan Islands Museum of Art, Friday Harbor, Washington.

Kathleen Bartholomew

Kathleen Bartholomew, RN, MN, has been a national speaker for the past fourteen years. She was nominated in 2010 by Health Leaders Media as one of the top 20 people in the U. S. changing the culture of healthcare - specifically for calling attention to the dangerous impact on patient care of disruptive behavior by medical professionals, as well as the critical need for better physician-nurse communication. Kathleen is the author of five books and is best known for her pioneering work, “Ending Nurse to Nurse Hostility” (2006), which offered the first comprehensive and compassionate look at the etiology and impact of horizontal violence on both patients and nurses. As a health care culture expert, Kathleen now speaks about patient safety, communication, leadership and power to hospital boards, the military, senior leadership, and front line staff.

Kent Godfrey

Kent Godfrey studied clowning at Ringling Brothers’ Clown College and earned an MA in special education from Converse College. While pursuing his BA in theatre at the University of Iowa he described performances to blind audience members and developed a multi-sensory method of presenting theatre to blind people. While studying human movement at the Laban Centre he began to realize that specific aspects of sound and movement correspond directly to each other. As a Peace Corps volunteer on the island of St. Lucia he taught the performing arts to disabled children. This provided a laboratory for developing his teaching methods and theories related to multi-sensory music. At present, he is a doctoral student at Washington State University. Creativity and exploration are central to his work.

Phil Borges

For over 25 years Phil Borges has been visiting and documenting indigenous and tribal cultures around the world. His award-winning books have been published in four languages. In 2003 Phil was honored with the Lucie Humanitarian Award at the Annual International Photography Awards in Los Angeles as well as the Purpose Prize in 2007. Phil teaches and lectures internationally and is co-founder of Blue Earth Alliance, a non-profit organization that sponsors photographic projects focusing on endangered cultures and threatened environments. Phil’s recent project, CRAZYWISE, explores cultural differences with respect to consciousness, mental health and the relevance of Shamanic traditional practices and beliefs to those of us living in the modern world.

Sam Wasser

Dr. Samuel Wasser is acknowledged worldwide as a pioneer of non-invasive wildlife monitoring methods, including genetic, endocrine, toxicology and detection dog techniques. After obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1981, Dr. Wasser received consecutive Career Development Awards from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution. In 2001, Dr. Wasser was awarded the Endowed Chair in Conservation Biology by the University of Washington Board of Regents. Dr. Wasser has participated in a number of conservation programs throughout Africa, South and North America, and SE Asia, in collaboration with state, federal, and international organizations.

Stephen Robins

Stephen Robins, MD, was born in South Africa and completed his medical training in London. After eight years specializing in both Internal and Family Medicine, he shifted gears to integrate his professional and avocational experiences into what he termed “medical communications” – employing high quality media to better communicate solid science and good medicine – while earning a living directing clinical research programs in the international pharmaceutical and medical device industries. He later co-founded a healthcare communications consultancy specializing in “accelerating the adoption of new technologies that enhance the delivery of healthcare”. Stephen has chaired several national and international multidisciplinary task forces that helped pioneer the standard of care movement that has come to dominate modern healthcare delivery.